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In 1995: How the LAPD's crime lab became the trial's weakest link

On June 27, 1995, the prosecution in People v. O.J. Simpson was pressing forward with its final category of physical evidence. The Los Angeles Times reported on proceedings that day in which prosecutors presented hair and fiber samples they contended tied Simpson to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. LAPD criminalist Collin Yamauchi had acknowledged under questioning that some aspects of the evidence handling in the case had not followed optimal protocols. Defense attorney Barry Scheck was making sure the jury understood exactly why that admission mattered.

O.J. Simpson, LAPD booking photo, 1994.

The case had begun with a double murder the previous summer. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a friend of hers, were found stabbed to death outside Nicole's townhouse at 875 South Bundy Drive on June 12, 1994. Nicole was O.J. Simpson's ex-wife. Simpson, a former NFL star, was charged with both murders. Judge Lance A. Ito presided over the trial in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, which opened on January 24, 1995. Over the following months it would run 167 days and generate a trial record of extraordinary scope — one of the most thoroughly documented criminal proceedings in American history.

Judge Lance A. Ito, October 1995.

The prosecution's physical case rested heavily on two leather gloves. The left-hand glove was recovered from the crime scene at Bundy Drive. The right-hand glove turned up at Simpson's Rockingham estate. Prosecutors argued both had been worn by the killer, and that DNA extracted from the right-hand glove contained a mixture of profiles consistent with Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. The gloves matched a style sold exclusively at Bloomingdale's in Beverly Hills — the same style, prosecutors said, that Simpson had purchased.

The gloves had already absorbed a serious blow before the hair and fiber phase began. During Week 21 of trial proceedings, O.J. Simpson personally attempted to try on both gloves in front of the jury. The leather appeared to fit poorly. The prosecution argued that blood exposure and storage conditions had caused the gloves to shrink, and that the latex gloves Simpson wore underneath during the demonstration had distorted the fit. The defense let the image work on its own.

O.J. Simpson outside the Santa Monica courthouse, 1997.

LAPD criminalist Dennis Fung had been the prosecution's primary evidence-collection witness. He first appeared during Week 11 of the trial, testifying to the procedures his team had followed at both crime scenes. But Scheck's cross-examination had been exhaustive. He established that criminalists had in some instances moved between different evidence items without changing their collection gloves — a contamination-prevention protocol step designed to stop DNA from one source from transferring to a swab or surface collected next. If that step was skipped, any resulting DNA profile could reflect not where the genetic material originated, but where careless handling had carried it.

Yamauchi's acknowledgment that some evidence handling had not followed optimal protocols extended that argument to the hair and fiber record. Prosecutors had introduced this trace evidence to argue microscopic contact between Simpson and the crime scene: hair consistent with Simpson's characteristics found on the victims' clothing, fiber samples from the scene matched to materials in his vehicle. These were significant claims. Their persuasive value depended entirely on the integrity of the procedures behind them.

The concession did not prove that evidence had been planted or deliberately altered. What it did was add weight to the pattern the defense had constructed for months: that the LAPD's forensic operation in the Simpson case was not the clean, rigorous process the prosecution had described. Each admission of procedural shortfall, however small in isolation, gave the jury another reason to hold the physical evidence at arm's length.

By late June 1995, both sides had called forensic experts who disagreed on DNA methodology, blood spatter analysis, and the chain of custody for nearly every exhibit. The hair and fiber evidence was meant to be cumulative — a final reinforcing layer atop the DNA, the gloves, the blood trail. Instead, the proceedings gave the defense one more opportunity to ask a question it had been posing since January: were the people who collected this evidence careful enough to be believed?

The verdict would come that fall — on October 3, 1995. But what the jury would ultimately have to weigh was not only whether the physical evidence pointed toward Simpson — it was whether the institutions behind that evidence had earned their trust.

Today in True Crime by CaseBond — 2026-06-27